


We Die Together Or Not At All (i will reach into hell and bring you back to me)

by davepetasprite



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreambubbles, F/M, LOLAR, Lalonde-Typical Dramatics, Necromancy, Rose's Dark Majyyks, Sadstuck, also theyre both trans but thats not the focus of this fic lol, dead daves are the enemy and the enemy is goddamn everywhere, i guess, tags will be added as the story progresses, the only happy thing in this fic is how much dave and rose love each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 09:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12106206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davepetasprite/pseuds/davepetasprite
Summary: In a timeline where the world avoided ) (IC's condescension, Rose Lalonde deals with pain the only way she knows how: to violently reject it.





	We Die Together Or Not At All (i will reach into hell and bring you back to me)

**Author's Note:**

> so this is just a little bit of pretty self-indulgent writing, maybe a bit of a character study of an angry alpha rose and an exploration of doomed alphaverse timelines so. mm. unfortunate

Dave Strider is dead. This is the first thought you have in the morning. It travels from your fingers as they brush against sheets that should be warm but are deathly cold. It jerks up your arm, past the skin he should be tracing as he wakes, through the shoulder he should be kissing, up the throat whose expanse he has travelled too many times to recall. When it claws up your spine, breaks into your skull and blooms and rots in an instant behind your eyes, that is when they open. That is when you see the empty space he leaves in the bed beside you.

That is when you get angry.

You seem to run on anger now, its acrid heat powering the thud of your heart and the ticking of your mind—you only bother to eat when the pain in your chest travels to your stomach. Though, it must be established that you do not neglect yourself in the name of mourning. You are not so lost in the aftermath of a lover's passing, nor has depression so dragged you down into its sordid depths, that the maintenance of food and water and clean clothing is more than you can bear.

You're just too fucking busy trying to get Dave back.

It can be done, you know this. You've seen it. You've _Seen_ it. There is a life after death; souls can be retrieved. In your visions you have watched multitudes of yourself return, breathing and livid, from bloody piles of mangled purple and torn orange on the ground. Certainly, you've Seen other Daves die before, far too many times—but at least one of him always came back. There is an entire dimension where the dead roam, and you will mangle the very fabric of your universe with your bare, dripping hands to bring him back from there.

 

It's his funeral today.

You will not be in attendance.

Instead, you are kneeling on the floor of your living room. What furniture you didn't shove into the corridor is pushed up against the walls, tangled in carpet you ripped up this morning. You were careful with the twin couches Dave was—is, fond of, as well as the bookshelf with his favourite pickled specimens, but all else can be replaced. You're going to need a clear space for what you're about to do.

From the depths of your attic you produce a thick tome, heavy and ancient and shedding dust in waves that settle in the fabric of your skirt. You run a finger over the jagged carving of some many-limbed, many-eyed being on the front cover and inhale sharply at the feeling that takes your hand; it's as though you plunged it into the darkest part of a frozen sea. The cold sinks deeper, moves further up your arms the longer you hold it, and you let it thud to the hardwood floor just as your nails tinge with blue. 

You purse your lips at it. "Don't test me," you say, voice blunt. "Right now is really not the best time to entertain any fantasy of recalcitrance. I left you up there with as many copies of Mary Shelley's novels as you could eat and I'll return you to your shelf after this spell, so stop moping." You lean over it, eyes hard. "Unless you want me to rip you in half like an anachronistic phonebook."

The book's unusually large shadow recedes a little and, though still cool to the touch, doesn't try to drain your heat away. 

"Thank you," you say, and flip the book open, navigating to the page that shivers just slightly in your Sight and spreading its pages flat with a gentle palm.

Its unfathomable language yields itself to you, dark letters shifting around the page into comprehension beneath your gaze, and you leave to collect the items it lists before returning. The intricate summoning circle spilling between the pages is easy enough to transfer to the hardwood floor, drawn in black ink with a brush you borrowed from Dave's side of the art room. Time passes without notice or meaning; the curtains throughout your house are thick and drawn. 

You will not invite the sun into your home until your own light returns to you.

By the time the summoning circle is complete, sigils enscribed and towering candles placed at every corner, you are tired. The floorboards have worn dark bruises into your knees to match the rings beneath your eyes and the stain of ink on your fingers. Weaving your magic into every brushstroke has been more draining than you anticipated—it's been a while since you attempted a ritual of this magnitude, and you almost forgot what it feels like. It is also some consequence of your emotional investment; though your command over spellcraft is total and unquestionable, magic always comes with caveats. Especially magic driven by emotions of this magnitude.

Magic borne of anger corrupts. You can feel the flicker of grey beneath your skin, the taste of ash hot behind your teeth, sulfur rising from your breath. The whispers of beings you were, in another life, beholden to are rising in volume and drowning out the rustle of skin against parchment as you dig your fingers into their realm and howl without sound. They can taste your fury and they want more; you are such a tiny thing in their existence, but you're the strongest of their consorts and that means something to them.

Magic borne of love exhausts. Too many spells of this calibre and you would feel your bones grinding at the joints, watch your hair turn grey and your eyes cloud with age. You're probably only using up a few months of your lifespan on this so it's of little concern; you would give up every day you have left for a single more with him if your hand was forced. It makes sense, really, this detail of equivalent exchange. To sacrifice one half of your heart for the other. This timeline is already dead—Dave's company was the one thing that made its continued existence worthwhile.

In any case, working both forms of magic at the same time is close to unbearable.

 

Some time later you begin the spell in earnest. A small bowl in the centre of the circle holds a taglock of Dave's hair and blood, retrieved from a hidden compartment in the bottom of one of your jewelry boxes. The candles are lit, the sigils are dry. The room is all at once silent and tumultuous; as though the very walls are holding their breath and trembling with the effort. You saw fit to turn your phone off some time ago—though you've been listening to a mixture of Florence and The Machine and the _Phantom of the Opera_ soundtrack all day, you don't want to risk some ill beat breaking your concentration. Now there is nothing to drown out the murmurs of the Horrorterrors. But that's fine, truly. Ignoring their thunderous requests is akin to ignoring the mewls of a fussy cat as it winds its way around your feet.

You settle yourself beside the bowl, folding your skirt beneath your thighs and taking your Thorns in-hand. You close your eyes and ground yourself, feeling the creak of the wooden flooring below you, and the shift of the soil below the foundations. You will be reaching into another realm entirely today, and you will need to be able to return. Once you can inhale and taste wet earth on the back of your tongue, you stab your Thorns deep into the wood at the corners of the circle, pinning the ink to the floor and binding it to your world. You can feel the interlocking lines jerk and struggle, trying to lift away, but you hold them in your mind and slam them back down—claiming the magic, and opening the portal.

Drawing on your power, you command the threads of time to fall into place and yield, winding them around the tips of your Thorns and pulling tight, tighter, until you find one that leads to the place where the dead walk. You follow it, and _Look_.

 

When you open your eyes, you're kneeling in sand, white like sugar and sifting just as fine. Ahead of you there's some sort of compound, shadowed above by acidic yellow clouds against a calm blue sky. There's the quiet hiss of an ocean licking at the shore, and when you turn there it is—multihued and almost sickly with neon, foaming yellow and pink where the waves cap. You stand, skirts falling back around your legs, your feet leaving no imprint as they pass through the sand. You are not actually here, after all. Your form is only a projection; the limit of a Seer's majyyk-warped power. 

"Rose?" comes a familiar voice from behind, and you whirl, joy barely restrained by your incorporeal frame—only for your grin to fall when you realise your mistake.

It isn't him. 

He's far too young, perhaps fourteen by your estimate. There's no stubble along his jaw, no hair on the forearms bared by rolled-up sleeves. 

"Oh shit. That's a new one," he says, looking you up and down. His voice has the cracks of early hormone therapy, the force of trained depth, and he's about a foot shorter than he should be. Would have been. Behind the aviators you can see the light of this planet reflecting off milky-white eyes, bright and unmistakable against his dark skin.

Well, you found _a_ dead Dave. Just not _your_ dead Dave. This is progress. Of a sort.

"You're... you're definitely a Rose, right? Not her mom or something? Oh shit, wait, are you... nah. Nah, you're Rose."

You mull over your words for a moment, tamping down the urge to ask about this apparent mother. "Yes, I'm Rose. And you're Dave, I assume."

"One of 'em," he says, and a frown wreaths his expression before fading quickly. 

You wonder if you should be delicate about this. A conversation with the ghost of a young man whose life ended so prematurely... perhaps you shouldn't take it too lightly.

Then there's a tug on the back of your skull as a headache builds in the body that's still kneeling in your living room, and you decide to cut the shit. 

"Have you seen many others here?" you ask. 

"Many other ghosts, or Daves?" he asks, kicking his feet and sending sprays of sand onto his vermillion pants.

"Yes."

"Yeah, I have. We're kind of a dime a dozen deal. Can't walk through a dreambubble without tripping over four dead Daves and landing on another twenty. This place is pretty empty though." He glances over at the compound. "I was the only one here 'til you showed up."

"I'm looking for one in particular," you say. Then, because the guilt is irritating, you add, "I don't mean to be brusque, but my time is running out and I have to find my Dave before I leave. If I could, I wouldn't be opposed to keeping you company, if that's something you'd... like."

"Your Dave?" he repeats, then stuffs his hands into his pockets, self-conscious. 

"Yes," you say, "my Dave." 

His brow furrows. "He'd be your age?" he asks. You nod, hope mounting again, but he shakes his head. "Nah, sorry to disappoint but I'm pretty sure teenagers have the monopoly on death here. I didn't, uh. Actually think any of us would get to live that long."

"I can assure you that there are at least a few timelines where we live to adulthood," you say gently. 

"Viable ones?" he asks.

You break eye contact at last, letting it drift out across the sea. "Viable enough," you say. It's mostly the truth. The timeline you come from is a withered offshoot with a dead end—you've Seen the way it should have been, and come to accept the way it became. But it will last long enough, the timeline only peetering out some time after your death.

You much prefer it to the truly "viable" timeline where you fall beside Dave at the wrong end of a trident, at least.

(You try not to think about the fact that, ultimately, the two timelines were not so dissimilar in the end.)

"So... did you need me to act like your tour guide into the afterlife," he asks, with that tilt to his voice that makes you fondly prepare for the incoming ramble. "We can have a real fun and lengthy conversation about whether you're dead or asleep and I can juggle magic yarn balls like I'm larping a fucking muppet David Bowie. Then when you realise you actually are just asleep and I'm trying to distract you from the sun I'm falling into on some bullshit suicide mission that you were supposed to go on instead of me you can take a knife to the heart and wake up." He stops himself with a jerk, digging the end of his shoe into the sand.

You watch him shift uncomfortably, strangely disheartened by the sight of this young Dave curling into himself and staring at the ground like it's going to flinch beneath his gaze. "I'm afraid that if you're making reference to some interaction you had with another version of me," you say, mind picking over the possibilities that your gift of Sight affords, "I can't relate. My origins lie in a very different universe to the one you are from."

He nods. "Yeah, I probably should've figured. It'd have to be a couple universes removed to let any of us actually grow up with Skaia's raging hardon for dead kids."

"So I see." A moment passes. The gnawing pain in the back of your head worsens. "Just for clarification, I happen to be neither sleeping nor dead. Perhaps my current state could be likened loosely to dreaming, but I'd argue otherwise."

He looks at you. "Are you sure?"

You nod. "Very." You scan the horizon again, looking for any sign of Dave, any hint of where he could be. 

There's nothing.

The Dave in front of you shrugs. "Good for you, I guess." He looks like he's about to say more, but thinks better of it. You're too distracted to ask.

You're getting... nervous. It's taking everything you have to sustain your form here, and you thought you had taken all the necessary steps to find him. Perhaps he's elsewhere on this planet. Any other time you'd love to engage in a conversation to learn more about how this realm functions, but not now.

"Dave," you say, "I'm going to look for him."

"Did you... want some company," he asks, hesitance drawn along the edge of his breath. 

"If you have some to spare," you say, watching the tension bleed from his frame, "I'd appreciate it."

"Cool." He looks back over at the compound. "I know this planet pretty well, and that's the only place he could be, if he's in this dream bubble. Did you wanna look there?" You glance at it, appreciating the lines of architecture and rainbow river flowing through its belly, and nod.

As you and teen Dave float over the landscape towards it, you ask for some clarification. "You said... 'dream bubble'?"

"Yeah," he says. "That's what this whole place is made of. Just a bunch of intersecting dream bubbles of memories from the people in them."

"Memories," you repeat, looking around. "So this planet is..."

"My memory, yeah," he says, his face turned away from yours. "You go far enough in that direction—" he points off to his left— "you'll hit what I'm pretty sure was some part of Alternia. Or Beforus, maybe, who fucking knows." He turns towards you and gestures to your right. "That way's a memory of Prospit. There're some other dream bubbles connected to this one, but I haven't really seen 'em."

"Why not?" you ask, as you reach what must be the front door.

He shrugs as he pulls it open and heads in. "Haven't been dead long enough to look around. I haven't even found out if asking the afterlife equivalent of 'so what're you in for' is all hells of verboten or not. You'd think that's the first thing you learn, you know, in death school. Ghost Etiquette 101: Is It Cool To Ask Someone How They Died?"

"And what are you doing here, of all places?"

He takes a moment to respond. "I've been looking for someone too. Thought this would be the best place to find her. And hey, guess I was right." His voice is flat where it doesn't decline with disappointment.

You glance at him as you drift through the doorway, into a broad foyer. It's only now that you realise this is an actual house—in front of you, there's a kitchen and a living room straddling a wide staircase. The whole place is peppered with wizard statues, the biggest of which bearing a strange resemblance to Zazzerpan. "You were looking for me?" you ask. He huffs something that almost resembles like a laugh. "Your version of me," you correct. A nod. Your expression softens. "I hope you find her."

He shrugs. "Knowing Rose, she'll find me first. But hey, I've got all of time to look." 

"Unfortunately I don't share in that particular luxury," you say, grimacing. You hover at the foot of the stairs and peer up. This is a frivolous use of time. "DAVE!" you call, your voice bouncing through the empty home—and, judging by the lack of reply, it is empty. You take a breath, trying to quell the frustration you can feel building in your chest. 

"No dice, huh," says ghost Dave. "Figures he wouldn't be hanging around your old digs. Kinda breaks the pattern though."

You try to cast your gaze out further, try to search the surrounding dream bubbles for him, but you're hindered by the pain that presses out against your eyes. You hiss as you snap back into your astral form, and Dave's brows rise above his shades.

"Holy shit," he says, but you're barely listening. "Hey, Rose, it's cool, we'll find him."

"No, we won't," you realise, eyes wide and filling with panic. What went wrong? What could you possibly have fucked up? Why isn't he here?

"Why not?" In the corner of your vision you see him raise his hands, stepping towards you carefully. "Hey, Rose—"

"He's not here," you whisper. "He should _be here_ , there's no other place for me to look. _Where is he!_ " you snarl, and the other Dave flinches back, hands shifting from placating to defensive, and you stop immediately. The storm in your eyes settles, clouds still near-black with unspent rage but the thunder dying out. "No, wait, I'm sorry," you say, the sight of him shying away too much for your conscience to bear. "I didn't—I'm," you try, but your voice clings to the back of your throat and refuses to be forced between your teeth. He should _be_ here. You _need_ him to be here.

Dave's hands fall and he feigns a relaxed stance, face smoothing into a mask of serenity, but you know him too well to be fooled. Even this Dave, so much younger, so much smaller, so much sadder, is recognisable in his discomfort. "It's cool," he says, despite all evidence that your shared circumstance could not, in fact, be Less Cool. He says something else, but his words are lost in static. You've been here too long.

You fall to your knees and it takes everything in you not to phase through the marble flooring. Screwing your eyes shut against the pain, pressing your fists to your ears to hold your skull in one piece lest it fracture and fly apart—and suddenly it's over. It's cold and calm and still, and against your legs you feel smooth, solid wood. You open your eyes to the sight of your living room, and you have never felt less at home than you do in this moment.

**Author's Note:**

> death makes everyone depressed who'd've thought, huh
> 
> also the chapter 1/3 thing is sort of optimistic on my part, but i figured it'd be fun to try and set some sort of framework for myself lmao
> 
> .......god i love rose lalonde so much


End file.
